What's the significance of the number 12 ?

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I don't always believe in conspiracies but I thought it was rather strange when I realised that lots of things were in groups of 12 such as 12 zodiac signs, 12 disciples of Jesus, 12 Greek gods, 12 numbers of the clock etc. I remember seeing these documentaries about theories and conspiracies surrounding aliens being behind the building of ancient structures and things such as the pyramids of Egypt, the walls of Troy and the Nazca lines and art works in ancient Mayan and aboriginal civilisations of beings that looked alien-like and that somehow there were 12 aliens behind it all much like when I saw Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Even now today, there a committees made up of 12 people or 12 people in a ruling party. It sounds rather absurd and I'm thinking it is and that there maybe is nothing strange about it all, its just a number and it has just maybe by accident or co-incidentally been passed down and used by people around the world through the ages.

Maybe I have fallen victim to confirmation bias.

12 inches to a foot. Two feet = 24 inches so 24 hours in a day would need two feet to stand on or the clock would fall over... Or one big foot... So Bigfoot does exist. Uhmmm.

very simple. Twelve has many factors.

Youve got five fingers on each hand. Ya got two hands. So primitive people tend to count on their fingers.

That causes a temptation to base your number system on five, or on ten.

One problem. Ten is ONLY divisible by five, and by two.

But notch your base up to twelve, and ... you got an amazing number that can be divided by two, three, four, and by six. Very convenient for dividing stuff up.

Thats why there are 24 hours in a day. That way the day naturally splits up into three: eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours off.

If it were say, 25 hours, then you you have to sleep 8. 333333 hours, etc. Who needs THAT s**t?

No conspiracies. Just basic arithmetic. Arithmetic that turns into a tradition of numerical memes that survived the millenia in western Eurasian civilizations.

One dozen donuts.

If the standard clock was base-10, the day would run from 00:00.000 to 10:00.000, with each hour being made up of 100 "Centons" (Hail Galactica!).

Each centon would be 86.4 of our seconds long, and would be analogous to our current "minute".  Each centon would also be 10 decicentons, or 100 centicentons, or 1000 millicentons.

There would be no time zones.  The Prime Meridian would pass through the most prominent natural land feature (usually a mountain), and would be directly under the sun at 05:00.000 exactly (Mid-day).

There's roughly 12 lunar cycles per year. It's one of those easily observed things that we've been aware of basically for as long as we've been keeping track of time.

Base-12 number systems were common historically, including the Germanic peoples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal